Game REVIEWS
Star Ocean: the Last Hope International Edition (PS3)
System: Playstation 3
Publisher: Square Enix
Category: RPG
Available Now!
Originally announced as an XBOX 360 exclusive, “Star Ocean: The Last Hope,” made by Tri-Ace and Square Enix, found its way onto the PlayStation 3 with many extra contents. Due to the success of the last three games, Star Ocean: The Last Hope was given a lot of expectation as the first one on the new generation of consoles; it did not live up to its anticipation.
This game was set to be a prequel to the entire Star Ocean series. It tells the story of humans when they first obtained the power of interstellar travel. As the only Star Ocean game on the new generation consoles, it went through some major changes compared to the older games.
The story of this game is quite simple, the main character explores the stars and meet people who help him save the universe. It was pretty much a very simple and generic story with no major plot twist. The graphics of the game is absolutely gorgeous, on Xbox and PS3 alike. It feels like the development team really put a lot of time into making the character models to make sure the full potential of the next generation consoles is used.
The battle system has been simplified as compared to the last installment. In this game all attack skills are mapped to the two trigger buttons. Each button can have up to 3 skills at once. It’s so simple that most fights can be won with the use of 1 hand. There isn’t much strategy involved in fighting an insanely strong boss anymore: all it requires is to set healing character to do nothing but heal and spam enemy with attack skills.
Music score of this game has nothing very memorable. Each soundtrack has its place and the music works nicely with the scene, but it is a little bit too generic to be really memorable. The voice acting of the game is, for the most part, painful to listen to. The voice of the characters did not capture their virtual appearance, and one of the characters says the word “’kay” at the end of every single line she speaks, in a monotone. After a little while it would drive any person crazy, mute the TV and turn on the subtitles.
The PS3 version of the game offers many small changes. Being the “International Edition,” this version offers variable language for both voice acting and subtitles. It also offers the player the
Japanese version’s animated character picture in the menu and on the battle field. So instead of staring at a very pretty and refined computer generated mannequin, it can be replaced with Japanese anime art style character head shots. Also, the PS3 version of the game changed around the locations of selected treasure chests, added a few more chests in the game, fixed an experience exploit that was in the original XBOX version, and changed a few synthesis ingredient lists.
Replay value of this game is quite high. Apart from the achievements that would take hours to complete, there are a couple extra dungeons that are both challenging and interesting to play. At the end of each dungeon, Tri-Ace placed one of each trademarked hidden bosses that appear in each and every game they make. To complete this game in its entirety would take anyone, on average, about 55-75 hours, including finishing all of the difficulty levels and complete the data collection.
Overall this is not a bad game, but it is just not in the same league as its predecessors. Also, the voice acting for the English translation of the game was horrid. So this title is recommended for fans only, to those who already love the series and want more back story to the series.
***Written by Benson Chen
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